That would solve the problem of making a living when cruising around the world
Arrive in Tahiti, raise the flag showing you have a 3D printer on board, and then provide expensive services to all boaters in need of parts for the engine , or the autopilot !

Back in '52 ,Kurt Vonnegut wrote 'Player Piano' telling about society changing with automation.. About the same time I read a story about a renaissance hero who programs his computer to extrude a space ship in which he leaves Earth with his sweetie. A tad short on the technical aspects but most of us have no idea how things work anyway so not to get hung up with details. The concepts are now coming to reality and the dream of sailing off in your own vessel is closer, even if you do have to buy the program.

I disagree. I'm pretty sure that most book publishers outsource their printing these days, and even newspapers have started to move away from printing in-house. So really, not only has it already happened, it's already common.

I think we are looking at this differently.

First even if book publishers are outsourcing it is to a bigger printer, not some guy with a photocopier in his basement...

and those who are outsourcing, likely they are outsourcing Stephen King novels, not Kilgore Trout.

If I read you right, you are saying that O'day is going to outsource boat building to a guy with a 3-D printer --- is that right?

Quite a bit of printing is now print-on-demand. Nautical charts are all POD now, as are a lot of textbooks. We have a digital press that is really not much more than a beefed up copier, and it can turn out a full-color 60-page saddle stitched book for under $1.50.

Anyway... I think 3D printing is very exciting. I bet race boats will be the first to use it. You could create crazy microfoams and vary the thickness exactly as a designer specified to create super lightweight hulls.

In my just 'published' response I think we are looking at this differently. I think POD is more from people who have the ability to do mass productions... I don't think they are doing just one offs... maybe they are.. doing 3,000 different books two at a time POD, When I look at the verso of a book and it says: "Toronto, London, New York" as places of printed... I will concede it is likely it is POD, but not from a small printing company..

I do agree that just as there are printers doing one off 'artist books' there will be 3-D printers doing Oracles... I still wonder it it won't be cheaper to make them buy hand...your thought of microfoams might lend itself to the fact a 3-D printer could make something that can't be hand made.

First even if book publishers are outsourcing it is to a bigger printer, not some guy with a photocopier in his basement...

and those who are outsourcing, likely they are outsourcing Stephen King novels, not Kilgore Trout.

If I read you right, you are saying that O'day is going to outsource boat building to a guy with a 3-D printer --- is that right?

I think books are a poor comparison to boats. While there may be tens or hundreds of thousands of books printed at a time even a large boat builder only builds a handful a year. As an example take the J-35. Over the ten year production run they built about 300 boats, or right at two and a half a month. For a 35' boat this is a pretty successful production run, but for almost anything but a boat company it wouldn't even count as a production run.

"people have been able to buy 2-D printers for sometime now (both photocopiers and computer printers) and I don't think there are many people who are running a publishing company that way. "
It is called "demand printing" and if you order a title from Amazon and other sources, who are publishing it for an author, that's how they print it. Printing single copies of books to fill single orders may cost 5x-10x more than printing a conventional book on press, but it doesn't pay to publish books, stack them, stock them, warehouse and distribute them, until you get into tens of thousands in one press run. So even at 10x the cost, demand printing can be cheaper for small volumes.
The parallels between boat building and book publishing would seem to elude me, though.
I could see a swimming-pool sized vat of goo, topped off with a herd of high powered lasers, to stereolithographically produce boat hulls (with integral tanks and piping, etc.) or auto bodies or anything else of size, but the goo ain't cheap nor would the machine to work with it. Of course, the same thing ("ain't cheap") applied to the Indigo and Xerox machines that did "on demand' printing in the late 80's, and they still managed to find and take over a market niche. Emphasis on niche.

Then there's the question of whether any of the plastics or metals currently being used for 3D printing would be suitable for a yacht hull. And titanium gets crossed off the list immediately, because if you could afford that much titanium, you'd buy a Gulfstream instead of a cheap less-than-one-hundred-meter yacht.

First even if book publishers are outsourcing it is to a bigger printer, not some guy with a photocopier in his basement...

I agree that it's not to a guy in his basement. But it's only to a bigger printer because the publisher is no longer a printer at all. (and any printing is more than none)

Quote:

Originally Posted by titustiger27

and those who are outsourcing, likely they are outsourcing Stephen King novels, not Kilgore Trout.

I disagree. Since the publishers don't do their own printing, they have no choice but to send all of it out.

Quote:

Originally Posted by titustiger27

If I read you right, you are saying that O'day is going to outsource boat building to a guy with a 3-D printer --- is that right?

Not to a guy with a printer in his basement.

But potentially to a specialized company whose sole purpose might be to print large form factor items (which in this case would include, but not be limited to, boat hulls). I would expect said company to have multiple printers, servicing multiple clients, probably in multiple industries. An industrial 3D print shop, if you will.

By choosing to post the reply above you agree to the rules you agreed to when joining Sailnet.
Click Here to view those rules.

Register Now

In order to be able to post messages on the SailNet Community forums, you must first register. Please enter your desired user name, your email address and other required details in the form below.Please note: After entering 3 characters a list of Usernames already in use will appear and the list will disappear once a valid Username is entered.

User Name:

Password

Please enter a password for your user account. Note that passwords are case-sensitive.

Password:

Confirm Password:

Email Address

Please enter a valid email address for yourself.

Email Address:

Log-in

User Name

Remember Me?

Password

Human Verification

In order to verify that you are a human and not a spam bot, please enter the answer into the following box below based on the instructions contained in the graphic.